


Take Me Away To Some Place Real

by auroreanrave



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: Established Relationship, Europe, F/M, Home, Post Series, Wanderlust, World Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 11:14:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1145316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/auroreanrave/pseuds/auroreanrave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They go around Europe in circles, to find something they're not looking for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Me Away To Some Place Real

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place post series in an undisclosed time in the future. Audrey Hepburn movie references are included. Title comes from Gabrielle Aplin's 'Home'.

**i. paris**   


They've been travelling for a long time, long enough that their home - or what they call home - is a little fuzzier around the edges of their minds. Blair sees it all in artistic strokes of grey and blue, although with each passing day it becomes both warmer and softer, as if time has a prescient halcyon effect on horrible memories, smoothing them out so that the wrinkles become less noticeable.  


They're on their second trip around Paris after making their way from London (for visit number three) and Berlin. Dan had spent hours in the Musee d'Orsay while she had worked her way through an Ernest Hemingway she had shoved in her suitcase almost nine months ago at Heathrow. She doesn't much like it but Dan raves about him, and if she supplements every chapter with reading French Vogue, it hurts nobody.  


When he's done, he finds her in a cafe, macaroon crumbs on her Rachel Roy sweater and the remains of a cafe au lait in an oversized cup against her elbow. She smiles at him in that wry, thin way, and asks him if he's done being pedestrian with the other tourists. Dan tells her to be quiet and steals a lemon macaroon off her plate (he may know that she saved it for him).  


That night they have dinner at a restaurant and Blair fucks Dan into the sheets of their hotel so hard he sees stars. They leave Paris after that because she's not going to dance with him on Bastille Day. It's too cliche.  


**ii. berlin**   


Dan sings 'Ich Bin Ein Berliner' under his breath until Blair jabs an elbow viciously into his ribs. She dresses all in black, this season's Ferrigamo heels in a shade of obsidian and oversized black glasses she's carried all the way from Manhattan, and drinks coffee as strong as sulfur.  


Dan visits an old NYU friend who invites them to an industrial club later that evening. They fuck before they leave, Blair's hair tastefully messy and Dan's shirt rumpled. The music pounds in their ears and they drink Jagermeister and light beer until neither of them are capable of walking back to their hotel.  


They walk until they're sober and sleep the rest of the day away, Blair tucked away neatly under Dan's arm. They wake, drink coffee, and then fall back sleep, bags under their eyes and their bodies aching. They're not so young anymore.  


They leave Berlin the next day, Blair's sunglasses firmly in place.  


**iii. zurich**   


In Zurich, Blair and Dan visit the Bahnhoffstrasse where Dan acts as pack horse and Blair as experienced shopper. They listen to covers of Kylie Minogue and Bruce Springsteen in a live music bar and Blair counts the moles on Humphrey's back and shoulders.  


The next day, she awakens him. "I want to go to Tolochenaz."  


The drive is several hours and when they reach there, Blair makes her way immediately to the cemetery, finding her way to a small, simple grave that is maintained and cared for. Dan hangs back, finding no words to say and no reason to bother at all, letting Blair cry for a woman she never met, a princess without a throne.  


When she's done, she buys the biggest floral arrangement she can and puts it on the grave and walks away without a word.  


"When do you think we'll be done, Blair?" Dan asks on the drive back home to their hotel in Zurich. "I just - we need a home, Blair."  


"No one's stopping you leaving, Humphrey." Blair's voice is clipped and cold, and they don't talk the rest of the way.  


When Blair wakes up in the morning, Dan is gone. She resolutely doesn't cry into her pillow.  


**iv. rome**   


It's almost insultingly easy to track down Dan. He leaves his tabs in the hotel room's computer open for one, showing tickets to Rome. Once Blair has composed herself and considered at least three dozen reasons why ignoring Dan and either a) going onto Athens or b) heading back to New York, are much more sensible reasons, she buys tickets for the next flight.  


Rome is much warmer than she expected and she's glad she opted for her 'Sabrina, post-Paris' outfit to travel in (a strapless peasant top in coral colours and black capri pants and brightly coloured ballet flats).

Blair is unsure why she's doing this, running after Humphrey like she's Sabrina, but she's done with overthinking situations; she left New York for a reason after all.  


She makes her way to the Pantheon, but he isn't there; nor is he at the Coliseum. Blair is angry and sweaty and ready to throw down her messenger bag and call it a day when she spots Dan by the Trevi Fountain.

His hair curls over his collar and he cups a small cardboard cup of gelato in his hands.  


"I'm ready. Okay?"  


Dan looks up from looking at the waters of the fountain to find Blair's eyes, his eyes crinkling against the afternoon sun. "Ready, Blair?"  


"To settle down. I've spent so long trying to find somewhere, that I ended up... not really wanting to. I enjoy travelling with you, Humphrey. And I don't want to go back to New York. We burned a lot of bridges there, and..." She trails off, a little unsure. Blair is unused to holding out for somewhere to squash; not for years has she let anyone get close really. Except for Dan. She feels smaller and bigger than she ever has before, like a little girl and a superhero all at once. She feels Audrey might have approved.  


Dan smirks a little. "Do I even need to ask how you tracked me down?"  


"For someone who ran the biggest gossip website on the East Coast for nearly seven years, you have an insultingly strong lack of any computer basics." She's just being honest. Call it turning over a new leaf.  


He grins and stands, finishing his gelato and placing it in a trashcan. Dan offers her his hand. "I get to pick the city."  


Blair takes a deep breath. "I get to pick the apartment."  


Dan grins. "Deal, Waldorf." She takes his hand in hers, and races for a Vespa.  


**v. paris, part deux**   


The apartment isn't huge, but it's big enough for both Blair and Dan to have offices, hers in shades of coral pink and turquoise, his in dramatic white and grey hues. The kitchen is too small and they mostly eat from the boulangerie down the street.  


Dan's laptop remains permantly propped up in his office, short stories and half a play sitting there, waiting for her to read whenever she likes. Sometimes when Dan's out at his publisher's Paris office, and she's not at work herself, she likes to wrap herself in a sweater and downloads a short story to her tablet, and spends a morning on their bed reading the stories he constructs, a plate of croissants at her elbow.  


Sometimes the stories are Serena, sometimes they're her. Blair doesn't mind, not really, about the Serena ones, given that the girl herself has come over on numerous occasions and been wined and dined by some of Paris' finest bachelors. This is Dan and Blair's place now.  


Blair gains a bit of weight through sheer indulgence - macaroons, _chouquettes_ , generous helpings of a _croquembouche_ at a friend's wedding in a small village outside of Lyon - and doesn't mind, likes that her hipbones aren't so prominent anymore. She wonders what happened to the girl who would have taken over the world that she left behind in New York, and learns not to mind.  


She sits out on her balcony at night and waits for Dan to finish dinner (he's been taking classes and secretly ordering gourmet when he fails) and watches the city dazzle in the darkness. She thinks - it might be in her mind after all - that she can hear 'La Vie En Rose'.

Blair feels a warm hand on the nape of her neck, curls into it, and smiles.  


They're home.


End file.
